All the colours....
upon leaving all will turn to grey.
he used to see colours everywhere. not just the ones everyone could see, he also saw auras or energy signatures, even tracess of the energy of things which had been places before, a kind of trail he could follow to locate significant people and objects. now everything is grey.
when he was a child his oldest sister had died in a horrible accident involving poison. she had been estranged from his vati for some time before that, and after she pushed erkin and the rest of the family away, he withdrew, pulled back into himself, and would barely speak, and when he did talk it was only with family members, especially his sister, cami.
back then he had learned how to use his father's laptop to create artwork. the art he made often reflected how he saw things - energy halos and colour traces highlighting the images of familiar people, places and things.
it had taken meeting people who saw and thought similarly to the way he did to break him out of his self- imposed shell. those two had eventually become his first husbands. though few people knew or even saw them, they were the catalysts which set him free. he turned from being distant and withdrawn to being warm and social, especially with those he cared about. he grew by leaps and bounds, learning how to love and how to be a friend and a partner and a sibling and a son. he helped his family however he could, in whatever ways he was able.
he met another love. though he didn't share erkin's odd vision and insight, erkin loved him dearly, and he often confided in kris, things he hadn't dared tell any other.
eventually, through helping his family and friends, he found still more loves. one was unrequited, and he knew the man would never quite return his affection, but he still cared deeply for him, and they would always be close friends.
the other was a younger man he'd been calling his brother since he was born, but had never spent enough time around to really feel a brotherly connection with. kie had been having problems. he was angry and the one person he'd been closest to was a lot of the reason he was angry in the first place. erkin reached out to him, helped him however he could, and eventually realized that he felt for kieran much differently than brothers feel for one another. so in the last place he would have thought, he found completion. he found the last piece of the puzzle that was his heart.
he was with kie only shortly before tragedy struck. he and kieran often had problems understanding eachother, communication difficulties, mostly. erkin still tended to think quite differently from others, and he often could not express himself in ways that were easy for kris and kieran to comprehend. because of these difficulties, kieran and he would have arguments, or misunderstandings. and kie's response to these was to run. erkin invariably found him, always able to follow the colours of his energy trail, but one time he was nearly too late. Kieran had taken off on his motorcycle, so fast and recklessly that he slid off the road and into a tree at high speeds.
still erkin found him, calling an ambulance and getting him to a hospital. he stayed with kieran in that hospital for nearly a whole year, but he had been there so long time had ceased to mean much, except for the routine of physiotherapy, doctor appointments and medications. on the one year anniversary of the accident, kieran was angry that erkin didn't realize the significance of the date. It wasn't precisely erkin's fault. he had always been horrible with remembering dates. the anniversary passed rather quietly this time though. it wouldn't be so quiet the next time.
the following year, on the anniversary of his accident, kie became even more angered with erkin for not remembering. he and erkin had been having trouble as it was, but this seemed to be the last straw for kie, and he left erkin, filing for divorce.
erkin didn't want divorce, but at the same time he had wanted to abide by kie's wishes, so he signed the papers. around the same time erkin's first two husbands mysteriously vanished, leaving no trace, and erkin and kie's parents also divorced. life had turned to chaos on all fronts. even his musical career was floundering now, as kieran and another bandmate of his left the band.
erkin pined for his lost loves, while still trying to maintain his marriage with kris. but even that was strained, as he and kris didn't seem to always have the best communication, and kris slept most of the time, often missing birthdays and anniversaries. over the course of their five year marriage, kris had maybe remembered their anniversary once or twice. erkin had been sort of resigned to this, and wasn't particularly affected by it, but then he made a crucial mistake.
since the divorce, he had not spent any amount of time in the london apartment he had shared with kie. the place was still full of kieran's belongings, and it hurt erkin to be there, surrounded by things that all reminded him of the man he still loved, but who would barely speak to him anymore.
on his anniversary he had thought to make a gesture and give kris a key to that flat, forgetting that he had already done so around the time of the divorce. he went to the flat and was overcome by grief. he collapsed, barely managing to crawl into the hallway where a neighbor found him and brought him to the hospital.
when he got there, he wouldn't communicate with anyone. he wouldn't even respond when the staff performed routine tests and examinations. he was held for observation and to be given intravenous fluids since the doctors had determined he hadn't been eating or drinking anything. when the staff noticed him taking interest in one of their laptop computers, he was provided with one of his own, very much like the one he had misplaced long ago.
his husband went to visit him, and was deeply dismayed to find that erkin didn't respond to his presence at first. finally recognizing kris, but unsure from where, erkin communicated for the first time since his hospitalization by typing messages to kris on his laptop.
kris was even more disturbed when erkin wrote that he didn't even fully recognize him or know they were married. he knew Kris was "familiar" somehow, but could not place how he knew him. finally, seeing some of the jewelry he had given kris over the years, erkin seemed to recognize him more, and he accepted that he was married to kris when he was told, saying he must have loved him very much, then correcting himself to say he must still love him.
cami, who had been having problems of her own at the time, wrote kris, trying to console and encourage him, and reminding him that even if he had played a role in causing erkin's current condition, erkin would have ended up the same way sooner or later with all the stress and confusion he was experiencing, as this was how he reacted to trauma. she also reminded him that it was only because of kris that erkin had even managed to hold on for as long as he had.
whether from cami's letter or some other means, kris seemed to bolster his courage and did his best to comfort erkin, assuring him that he would see him through this difficult time, no matter what. finally, erkin replied a single spoken word - the first he had said to anyone since before being hospitalized. he looked into kris' eyes, and softly said the slang word for 'okay' that he had learned from his father and had used extensively, often to the exclusion of all other spoken communication, as a child. "'kah."